tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64339464945779499642024-03-21T21:20:35.749-05:00gardening with turtlesMariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.comBlogger374125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-40832300581239423572016-08-05T16:38:00.001-05:002016-08-05T16:39:03.775-05:00Does everybody have to be a butterfly this very minute?
(I'm going through my unpublished posts. This one was written years ago....YEARS. The majority of this caterpillar business took place in the summer of 2011.)
That's what I thought last summer after my newly planted coneflowers were taken down by newly relocated checkerspot butterflies and their resulting newly hatched eggs. I had brought in a potted plant from outdoors that was covered Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-77039288866788721372016-07-29T14:37:00.000-05:002016-07-31T13:13:14.491-05:00Guess who won 50 bucks!
In a contest for bad behavior!
Oh.....that would be this one.
A couple weeks ago my sister told me I needed to enter a contest her pet store was sponsoring because they wanted to see photos and hear stories about bad pet behavior. Colleen said everyone likes to hear stories about bad turtles, how could Michael Ray not deserve first prize?
Apparently she was right because last week they Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-677988302264638412013-04-20T21:03:00.000-05:002013-04-20T21:10:26.230-05:00"What the, what the......?" Part One and Part Two
(Most of this post was written last July. I thought I had already posted it which is why the title is listed as Part One and Part Two.)
Earlier today I found Cathy Jean stuck upright on her hind legs, one of her front legs stuck in a shrub. What the...? I wish I had a photo but I didn't think to take one until after I got her back on her four feet so instead, here's a picture of Michael Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-49911820108320246432013-03-24T19:19:00.001-05:002013-03-24T19:59:46.411-05:00It's spring! It's snowing! Again!
A month ago I was thinking we were going to have an early spring (just from having to listen to Cathy Jean's hellbent focus on getting out of her tank every waking minute!) but then one morning, the outdoors looked like this...
But at least it sounded like spring. Despite the sudden twelve inches of snow (which was all the more dramatic because it did not melt away the next day), the Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-57249731783117373982012-07-17T08:45:00.003-05:002012-07-17T09:02:04.395-05:00More Michael Ray...Caladiums before Michael Ray and his new found climbing and stomping skills:Caladiums after Michael Ray used his new found climbing/stomping skills:I am not going to post a picture of what he did just one day later. It's just so....... why do turtles have to be so darn thorough?When I come home from work now, Michael Ray is at the back door pushing, pushing, pushing. Behind him are all sorts of Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-46776754481618033482012-07-06T01:20:00.005-05:002012-07-06T01:34:27.862-05:00Happy HatchdaysThe always good and always sweet Starlinka turned 11 years old in June!Stella turned 21 in April but unlike Adele, she's not going to make anyone cry about it.And then there were the twins....the terrible, terrible, no longer teenager twins.Michael Ray and Cathy Jean may have turned 20 years old last month but they certainly didn't get any more mature.Nonetheless, everyone had a happy hatchday...Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-68218512848170426362012-07-03T12:35:00.002-05:002012-07-03T13:06:38.748-05:00Beating the heatA couple weeks ago I took a full week off from work and although I had plans to get a lot of things done (a lot!), I ended up just sitting on the deck, knitting, with all my pets around me, in glorious weather......alllllllll week........every day. It was great. Everyone immediately got into the rhythm of being served treats on demand, they just had to get my attention.A good staredown from a Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-82003276083057802262012-04-25T07:30:00.000-05:002012-04-25T07:30:00.338-05:00Buttonbush
Last spring I was at The Anita Gorman Discovery Center and was delighted to find a buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), a shrub native to this area.
Later in the year it looked like this...
And then later in the summer, it bloomed.
The flowers are just so darn odd.
They look like a styrofoam ball pincushion... Oddest, oddest things.
When I went on the Miami County Farm Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-29471983894933456992012-04-21T19:46:00.001-05:002012-04-22T10:45:31.597-05:00Spring beauty
I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog and good grief, although today is April 21, outdoors it is already midsummer. Everything that was supposed to bloom in the spring bloomed and everything that was supposed to bloom a month from now.....bloomed (Roses! I have roses the first week of April!). There's a lot going on out there but I want to capture the beauty of what was blooming a Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-67024636931860933062012-03-30T12:50:00.003-05:002012-04-04T21:44:15.394-05:00Happy as a 25.8 pound pea.That would be Michael Ray.Michael has decided to get those daffodils out of the way since their blooms are gone (note to future self.....what a crazy winter, what a crazy spring....in a couple days 90 degree weather starts.....and it's still March!!!!!). Michael's passion is to take down the peonies as soon as he can every year but this year he seems to be pacing himself since there are so few Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-40465420965659749292012-03-23T13:25:00.005-05:002012-03-23T21:12:30.296-05:00Beavers. Yes, beavers!Meg wanted to show me what was going on in the woods by the lake where she lives. A beaver had settled in and she wanted to show me what happens to trees when they get sculpted by an energetic, talented, enthusiastic, driven beaver who apparently has not yet been interrupted with his work.The beaver would gnaw the trees to a point and position the cut so that the tree would fall towards the lake.Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-84354207492981956282012-03-20T19:00:00.007-05:002012-03-24T19:49:57.900-05:00Violet is eighteen years old today! Eighteen!I thought she was sixteen going on seventeen......but nope. I had to check to be sure and she's eighteen. Eighteen!And she knows what she wants.**(a can of Fancy Feast just about every two hours.......and she usually gets it because well, you know, she's eighteen!!!!!)Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-41777271025048985582012-01-27T08:55:00.001-06:002012-01-27T19:04:56.686-06:00"You remember me?"Last month an old beat up car drove up my driveway and the driver, an old Asian man, yelled that question to me...many, many times. I was in the middle of planting crocuses. Tilly had managed to retrieve some of them to tenderly chew while her brother walked off with the box that held all 500 of them. Well.....that's how many there were before the dogs got involved...and I noticed one of those Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-41186978406386629142012-01-26T01:15:00.010-06:002012-01-26T02:39:52.526-06:00More birdhouse perilsOne mullet birdhouse went up......and then the other mullet birdhouse went up.It was completely uneventful getting both of them up and that made me very, very happy...confident even. Those two houses looked good despite me having a hard time figuring out what straight was (even with a level) because I don't think one tree out there grows straight up.But when I tried putting this birdhouse up, theMariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-69613995302802659952012-01-17T23:30:00.004-06:002012-01-18T19:19:08.261-06:00Birdhousing perilsI put up this little birdhouse a year ago...And when I opened it up to clean it a couple weeks ago, I discovered paper wasps had built a nest in it.Luckily, paper wasps are not supposed to be aggressive and the queen should be hibernating somewhere else anyway...and the rest of the wasps should have expired by now...but I'm just going to wait for a really, really cold day to remove the nest Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-65315102474198733912012-01-06T13:30:00.006-06:002012-01-06T13:59:14.538-06:00BirdhousingA year or so ago I started making birdhouses. I still have no idea where or what or when exactly I'm going to build my house on Aussie's Acers (how they spell "acre" on signs in the country) but in the meantime, I've been busy creating my future avian subdivision.Once a house is built, it has to stay outside (or hidden somewhere indoors) until it moves to its final spot because Stella gets a Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-29500796812445091142011-12-31T23:55:00.008-06:002012-01-01T01:03:45.102-06:00First Gardening Casualty of the YearAlthough it's not quite 2012 yet (still have an hour to go...).I was checking on things on my land in Kansas a couple days ago and noticed that a tree I had planted earlier in the year, a tree that I carried gallons of water up a hill twice a week for the whole summer, was....gone.Oh wait, there it is, flat on the ground.It's not like there aren't thousands, thousands of other trees to choose Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-42376567688938906042011-11-22T16:00:00.007-06:002012-01-25T15:13:24.076-06:00The Tree That Ate Dogs...At the end of October (near Halloween), I took a day off from work because I knew it was going to be an absolutely gorgeous day...and it was. The temperature was in the 80s, the sun was out, the sky was blue, and despite the lack of rain in months, the trees were at their peak for fall color.I took a full day off from work because I wanted to get the rest of my potted plants in the ground before Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-26031922335247451312011-11-20T23:55:00.013-06:002011-11-21T15:18:58.034-06:00Pretty. Pretty. Pretty.Last May when the mayapples bloomed......they produced mayapple apples in June. Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) grow in large clonal colonies and only produce apples if the flowers are cross-pollinated from a different colony. Where those thimbleweeds were planted that were chomped and stomped by a visiting turtle and where I accidentally uncovered those snake or turtle eggs, and where I met Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-16319399058929892632011-11-14T01:00:00.002-06:002011-11-14T01:14:24.325-06:00Red, white...and wahoo!...as in Eastern Wahoo (Euonymus atropurpureus), a scrubby little native shrub I noticed in September because of the crazy dangling fruits that looked like 1960s earrings. The name is derived from Dakota for arrow wood ("wa" for arrow and "hu" for wood) because of the straight stems. I didn't see this with any of the wahoos on my land. They were shooting out at all angles, their favorite being 45Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-58703189566854455032011-11-13T12:45:00.002-06:002011-11-13T12:58:39.861-06:00Sunday and starlingsI was waiting at a stoplight recently and had the chance to watch a ball of starlings fly through the sky, bouncing in all directions but never touching the ground. A crow was in the air too and that ball of birds decided to bounce toward that crow, and just when they were about to encircle it, they quickly flew off in a completely different direction but then....they turned around to head off Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-33049672099746352512011-10-18T00:45:00.002-05:002011-10-18T01:00:03.731-05:00FallI don't know why but when the surprise lilies bloom, I always think of fall.....even though it's been two months since they've bloomed and gone underground again.I think of fall when the jack in the pulpit berries become vivid red......and even when they're still green because the green ones fall over too.I think of fall when dogs get covered with seeds......and when the soldier beetles get busy Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-58976331196430231032011-09-13T08:15:00.000-05:002011-09-13T08:15:53.395-05:00ThimbleweedI was at the Anita Gorman Discovery Center earlier this summer and saw these flowers blooming in the woodland garden.I knew immediately what they were because I recognized....the leaves (sometimes I am so good!).It's thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana), a native wildflower named for the "fruit" which sort of resemble thimbles (big emphasis on "sort of").I thought this plant was soooo pretty so I Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-25616326720717846262011-08-28T23:55:00.005-05:002014-08-09T22:00:13.656-05:00Nom. Nom. Nom.
Today I was watering my little pink dogwood (the one thing I planted this year that is doing really well) and noticed an unusual leaf. When I looked closer...I saw this leaf had some nommage going on. Interesting how this little guy made himself a comfortable place to sprawl while eating the leaf at the same time. Such efficiency and on such chubby little legs.
When I turned the leaf around Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433946494577949964.post-49835332800860533542011-08-22T23:55:00.005-05:002011-08-23T01:08:35.814-05:00Last weekend...I drove past crispy cornfields to get to my land in Kansas.
First stop was to check on my recently planted coneflowers and.....great. My garden had become a caterpillar nursery. I think these little stinkers are Silvery Checkerspot caterpillars...probably the result from the butterfly versions that looked so pretty on the coneflowers just a few weeks before. Oh well, that's why I planted them in Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16769488099776508540noreply@blogger.com8